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Making it up

Recently, Gaiman wrote:"Yesterday I reached the moment I'd been dreading for years, where you learn why the things that happened in the first chapter happened (which I hadn't known when I wrote them. I knew that they had happened, but not why) and as I started to write it, I realised that it was pretty obvious, so I wrote it, and learned a lot. This was an enormous relief. It does not always work out this way."

and then went on to say:"Chapter 6 is all typed and tidied and there's no evidence from what you'd read that it was a nightmare to write and that I had no idea what was happening paragraph to paragraph, or felt like I was making it up as I went along (a terrible thing for an author to feel)."

and I'm kind of stunned that there's a difference between "not knowing what's going on" and "making it up". Which, presumably, is why I'll never be a good writer - I can't do the "let's just see what the characters do" thing. I have to know where it's all going, and why, otherwise everything grinds to a halt partway through a rambly first scene, and never continues.